


Stories Untold

by Truth



Category: Brotherhood of the Wolf
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, Prostitution, Violence, Yuletide, canon character death, challenge:Yuletide 2005, recipient:Dreamiflame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-26
Updated: 2010-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-12 21:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truth/pseuds/Truth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beneath the story told by the Marquis d'Apcher lie a wealth of things unspoken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stories Untold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamiflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamiflame/gifts).



  


## Stories Untold

  
Fandom: [Brotherhood of the Wolf](http://yuletidetreasure.org/get_fandom_quicksearch.cgi?Fandom=Brotherhood%20of%20the%20Wolf)

  
Written for: dreamiflame in the Yuletide 2005 Challenge

by [Truth](http://www.yuletidetreasure.org/cgi-bin/contact.cgi?filename=18/storiesuntold)  


  
 _There were stories other than those of the Beast of Gvaudan, of course, many of them. The Marquis d'Apcher, did not regard them with the same importance, the same urgency as that particular tale, and his need to record the story of the Beast was wound around with many things, some of which never left the nib of his pen._

Thomas d'Apcher believed in honor and in duty. Simply because he'd been born to privilege did not mean that he was not aware of what that privilege demanded of him, and he'd always been something of a solemn child as a result. When the children of the nobility played, young Thomas was not the most popular of playmates. However, when they had their quarrels and fallings out, it was always to Thomas that they turned, rarely suspecting the hidden quirk of humor that lay beneath his solemn judgment as to who was in the right.

Their parents found it charming and Thomas did not discover until much, much later why they laughed so fondly at his quaint notions of responsibility as they ruffled his blond hair.

It was the duty of a nobleman to serve his people, his King and his country and his pride and honor made that duty no real burden. Duty defined him and Thomas was proud to be who and what he was. Honor brought pride in his responsibilities - among them that of marriage and carrying on the family name and their tradition of service to the King and to his people.

"What of Marianne?" he heard the adults say, to each other and to the de Morangias. "That would be a suitable match for both."

"What _of_ Marianne?" he'd wondered. Even at age 14, Marianne had been a boisterous handful, more likely to be caught climbing trees and falling into rivers while pelting after her elder brother than in doing anything ladylike. The terror and trial of her mother, the Countess, she wanted more than anything to be like her brother, the fearless naval hero.

She was pretty enough, even with her hair in a tangle and her skirts tucked up as her brother and his cronies taught her how to shoot, laughing at her and unable to take her seriously. Thomas took her seriously, if only for the militant light in the back of her eyes. Marianne de Morangias was not a creature to be trifled with, for all that as she grew she definitely became the sort of girl one would dearly love to trifle with.

Thomas remained on the outside of the glittering group of young men who were drawn to her beauty and air of casual assurance, even here in Gvaudan; so far from the lights of Paris. They weren't his sort of people even at the best of times, and he stood silently in the shadows, watching her play with her suitors. `Play' was definitely the correct word. Marianne's flirting ranged from modestly downcast eyes to brazen challenges... and Thomas knew they'd never wed.

"So suitable," his grandfather murmured.

"So appropriate," her mother's faded response.

No one asked Thomas and Marianne or even bothered to make a formal arrangement. It was an understood thing between their parents and not any of their concern, after all... or that of Jean-Francois, who eyed all of his sister's suitors with the same supreme contempt. That did not keep him from meddling, however, although Thomas was fairly certain that Marianne did not know how closely she was guarded.

The arrival of Grgoire de Fronsac put an end to all of it in any case. Thomas had never known anyone who could combine scholarly knowledge with the sort of licentious self-assurance that Fronsac exuded and when he saw the Chevalier's eye fall on Marianne, as he'd known it would, Thomas greeted the inevitable with a sigh of what could only be relief.

 _'Difficult,'_ he'd said, smiling wryly even as the understated truth fell from his lips. Fronsac was difficult also, bearing something of the same light in his eyes.

It had almost been a relief to watch Fronsac's determined pursuit. Marianne, clever and practiced as she was at this game, had never come upon such a dogged fellow player. Their game brought a momentary brightness to the darker days as they sparred and Thomas found himself grateful for it.

 _He chose the story of the Beast for the pain, the tragedy and the immense injustice of it. It was a story that had been clouded in darkness and lies from every direction and Thomas only knew what he did through chance and circumstance. The other, smaller, stories held none of the terrible passion and horror... but they were, perhaps, more revealing._

There was a true, dark terror that had sunk its teeth into the people of the province, but it was not the malformed lion who brought it, although it was the instrument of their suffering. Thomas never thought of that poor creature as the Beast - not after beholding poor Marianne in her torn nightclothes in a swoon that would not end; not after seeing Jean-Francois with his monstrous arm twisted beneath a body already stiffening in death. Fronsac's obvious sympathy for the wounded, ruined creature had driven any thoughts of blame from Thomas' mind.

It was not the lion and its jaws of steel and hideous trappings who scarred Thomas' people, causing terror in the very act of walking across the open spaces or stepping out of doors at night. It was not that paralyzing fear shared by them all through that last dark winter which Thomas remembered when writing... it was shame.

The bright spot of those days had been the merry dance between Marianne and her newest suitor, so much older, so terribly unsuitable... yet so dreadfully handsome. Thomas heard the servant girls and the whores as they whispered, giggling at the new arrival and wondering in awestruck voices if he'd really been to all those marvelous and savage places.

Fronsac made quite a splash, but it was not he who Thomas remembered as the hero of the tale, nor Marianne the heroine. Poor Marianne had been a victim, for all her high spirits and indomitable self-confidence and Fronsac had lost as much as she, despite his pivotal role in bringing about the end of those terrible, dark days.

Perhaps therein lay the difficulty, for a pivot is merely that on which events turn, not that which does the turning itself.

 _'It is not through boldness or flamboyance that such darkness is exposed,' he might have written, `but through silent determination and even more elaborate lies.' The Marquis knew better than to pen such a tale, however. Who would believe it? More importantly, who would repeat it? Who would remember...? The story must be remembered, and thus it was upon Marianne and Fronsac that his words rested, despite the harsher reality beneath. People needed heroes, especially in the dark times, and the Beast that roamed his province now would again be satisfied with nothing less than life's blood of the very people who had created it._

Thomas remembered the first time he'd laid eyes on Sylvia... he'd thought her beautiful but not at all to his tastes. She dabbled in the mystic and he mistrusted her with her veils, masks and deliberate mysteries. Too lovely, too perfect; a trap set to snare a certain type of man and convince him that his empty purse had nothing to do with her. Thomas liked a girl who could laugh and who took nothing, least of all sex, seriously.

There'd been far too much magic and mysticism in the province during those years. People took to blaming the deaths and the Beast on godlessness and the Devil or other, less savory, things. Thomas steered clear of it all with the detached atheism of one who attended mass regularly and professed a healthy and humble fear of god. Charlatans and fakirs all....

Fronsac's Indian had brought a forcible end to Thomas' detachment. Mani's silence combined with Fronsac's outrageous grand-standing on `his' savage's behalf to bring a new kind of belief to the young Frenchman. Thomas knew of the savages of New France, naturally, had even good-naturedly participated in some of the debates that the younger nobility held when out of earshot of their elders.

Mani was another breed of creature entirely from the images and stories that had filtered back to Gvaudan and Thomas found himself suddenly doubting a great many things that he'd always accepted as unyielding fact. Mystics didn't drink or impress whores and savages didn't have honor. Civilized man would always triumph over the savage and yet Mani walked tall and proud, demonstrably undefeated.

It was Mani who had brought the child out of the snow, miraculously whole despite her swoon and that, more than the talk of totem animals or of strange religions, had driven Thomas to seek him out. It had been harder than he'd suspected to run the other man to ground. Even here in what passed for civilization, Mani blended almost invisibly with his surroundings.

He finally found the Indian in the stables, seeing to his horse.

"How did you find her?" Thomas hung over the edge of the stall, watching Mani with something like awe. "I was certain she was dead."

Several minutes passed without an answer, but Thomas was used to Mani's ways by now and was content to wait. "The wolves."

"The... wolves?" The accented words felt like a strange blow to the gut. Everyone remembered the Indian's odd behavior in the aftermath of the mass hunt and Thomas had hoped whatever had driven Mani had been forgotten.

"They told me where she hid." His brush stilled against the coat of his horse and he looked up to meet Thomas' eyes. "They saw her, but... she did not hide from them."

Mani understood French readily, however stilted his speech, and Thomas took the time to consider his words. "She wasn't running from a wolf, you mean? But we found the boy...."

It was a shock to discover that no longer truly believed the creature to be a wolf and Thomas wondered somewhat distractedly when he'd ceased to have faith in the absolute conviction of his elders. "If not a wolf," he finally managed, sounding lost even to his own ears, "then what manner of beast can it be?"

"Not a beast at all," was Fronsac's reply, the man suddenly appearing from around the corner of the stall. "It is a lie, and lies are told by men."

Silent again, Mani returned to his previous activity and Thomas found himself oddly disappointed. "A lie...?"

Fronsac nodded grimly. "An ugly one, at that. Your grandfather seeks you, young d'Apcher. You'd best be running along."

The self-assurance of the man had Thomas halfway out of the stable before realizing that it was he who should be giving the orders in his family's stables and he found himself wondering again when obedience to Fronsac had become a habit. `The curse of the scholarly,' he berated himself, hurrying to obey his grandfather's reported summons, `tending to obey the louder voices simply out of habit....'

 _None of this flowed from his pen as the night sped past, time slipping between his fingers far too quickly for the story he had to tell. It was a last duty, to his people who had died, to those who had survived and, most of all, to those who had made the ending of the bloody reign of the Beast possible._

The whore, with her trite melodramatics....

The savage, with his quaint ways....

No one would ever truly believe that they had been the ones most instrumental in bringing an end to the horror that had stalked the province for almost two years. An odd pair, the spy and the warrior, but without the one, Fronsac would have died in prison and without the other they would never have learned who the Beast really was.

He mentioned their roles, of course, truthfully and without embellishment. It was not their story he had set out to tell, however, and Sylvia's gifted hands and subtle poisons did not receive the attention he could have given them. Nor was there any mention of Mani's silent patience when he found Thomas attempting to track what he thought was a wolf, or what had happened when the young Frenchman had evinced an interest in the bold, black lines inked into the dark skin.

... nor again any mention of the wild journey into fantasy that had followed Mani's `sacrament'. There were some things which Thomas would take to his grave, pieces of his own story which did not include any mention of the Beast and which he felt had no place against the greater lesson.

In the end, the Beast had been both more terrible and more grotesque than the countless twisted bodies it had left in its wake. Thomas' shame sprang from the fact that so many had turned on those they were meant to protect and savaged them out of petty spite. The innocent lives that had been lost to jealousy and the lust for power....

 _The ink had run out and he had not the heart to ring for a servant to bring him more. The entire house was awake, despite the hour, and he knew they listened for his footsteps, fetching further ink to continue the last few pages of his writing. The Marquis would not disappoint them, the people within or the people without. They were all **his** people, after all, and it was his duty to obey._

In the guttering light of the candles he mixed his own ink and, in a moment of fancy, pulled a page from the back of the book and stared at it. He could not capture the life of a thing in the manner of Fronsac's skilled hand, but he had some very little skill.

When they came to gather his papers much later, from the small room where he'd slept as a boy, they found the story of the Beast of Gvaudan, the last eyewitness account of the horror which had sent him willingly to face to the wrath of his people... and three additional sheets of thick paper.

The first was a pretty Venetian mask, with eyes that shone through the holes despite the lack of a face.

The second showed the silhouette of a young man overshadowed by a monstrous claw and a dark splash of ink that suggested a mob in his shadow.

The last had ink that was still wet; merely a simple geometric figure that took only the corner of an otherwise blank page, consisting of the suggestion of a sideways cross surrounded by dark triangles, and the faintest hint of a wolf's head.

There was nothing to say where they fit into the story, although an elderly woman insisted that the young man must be the young de Morangias....

Some stories do not so simply end, with the death of the dark Beast and the triumph of the young lovers.

Nor should they.

   
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